US telecommunications equipment maker CommScope will acquire Arris, in a $7.4B deal valued at $5.69 billion, with the difference comprised of CommScope’s assumption of Arris’s debt. As part of the deal, the Carlyle Group will make a $1M equity investment in CommScope for an approximate 16% stake in the new company.
CommScope’s CEO Eddie Edwards has claimed the two companies’ product lines are complementary, and that the combined company will “enable end-to-end wired and wireless communications infrastructure solutions that neither company could otherwise achieve on its own.”
The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2019.

For journalists who follow the latest news and trends in consumer electronics, IHS Markit analysts will be available for commentary ahead of and onsite at IFA 2018 in Berlin, Germany, from August 31 to September 5, 2018.

Blockchain is a distributed digital ledger technology which is used to record various types of transactions. In addition to being distributed, blockchain utilises cryptography and timestamps to provide a permanent record of interactions and is immutable - data cannot be (easily) altered or falsified.

Display shipments for notebook PCs are forecast to increase by 5 percent in 2017 to 177 million units compared to the previous year, while notebook PC unit shipments are expected to remain flat during the same period.

According to new analysis from IHS Markit (Nasdaq: INFO), a world leader in critical information, analytics and solutions, 3.4 billion smartphones will be ready for Apple Pay, Samsung Pay and Android Pay by the end of 2017, and the number is expected to increase to 5.3 billion by 2021.

Samsung Pay is currently only available for a limited range of recent high-end Samsung smartphones and so has a much smaller addressable market than the device agnostic Alipay. Apple Pay has also recently launched in China; IHS estimates that there are round seven times more active Apple Pay smartphones in China than those that support Samsung Pay. Both Apple and Samsung’s addressable audience is dwarfed by their bigger domestic Chinese rivals. Samsung Pay’s strategy shows that it needs to partner with potential competitors to gain user adoption and is a significant step to further extend its availability among Chinese users.

Travelling abroad is becoming a fashion in China. According to China National Tourism Administration 120 million Chinese tourists spent $215 billion abroad in 2015, a 53% increase in expenditure compared to 2014. This ‘moving country’ formed by 120 million tourists, paves the ways of Alipay’s expansion to Europe. The payments service and customised location features will help Alipay gain adoption by bringing benefits for both Chinese travellers and European merchants...

Samsung will now be available in China. As with Apple and Google’s mobile payments services, Samsung Pay works with NFC terminals. However, unlike the other services, Samsung Pay is also compatible with existing magnetic stripe readers. Samsung’s cooperation with card-processor China UnionPay was an important step to extend the acceptance and provide convenient mobile payments service to its users. But it’s just the beginning of entering into the competition with WeChat and Alipay...

In order to maximise its adoption by UK users, it is integral that Android Pay has a solid foundation of supporters upon launch of the service. These supporters include financial institutions, retailers, and payment platforms.
Regarding the retailers, Android Pay will be available everywhere that contactless payments are accepted, such as Costa, Starbucks, Waitrose, and Boots. Significantly...

The production of Q (quarter) panels is an emerging business model for Chinese and Taiwanese tablet panel makers which shifts more of the panel production process to Chinese solution providers. Through this process, Jason Hsu, senior analyst in IHS, reports that both the panel maker and the solution provider benefit.